Producer Ivan Reitman recently sat down to chat with io9 about the recently released Ghostbusters: Now Hiring VR game. During the course of the conversation, he discussed the failure of Paul Feig’s reboot and the future of the franchise. Reitman seems very confident that the disappointing returns from Feig’s reboot will not be the kiss of death for the series. In fact, he has designs on making more animated and live action films that will come together in a shared cinematic universe.
Reitman offered the following on the lack of return on investment from the recent reboot: “We certainly would’ve loved to have a larger hit. But considering the last film was almost 30 years ago, it really did extremely well. I think the film cost too much, frankly, and that’s the real issue. I personally had other points of view in terms of where the film should go and it was kind of a continuous conversation with Paul [Feig] about that. But Paul was the filmmaker on this one and he’s a very talented director. I wanted to give him enough room to do the film he thought it should be.”
He continued on and offered some insight on the future of the brand: “We jumped into an animated film [after the release of the reboot] and we are developing live-action films. I want to bring all these stories together as a universe that makes sense within itself. Part of my job right now is to do that.”
Katie Dippold (The Heat) wrote the script for the reboot. The film stars Leslie Jones, Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, and Chris Hemsworth.
Feig was initially approached by Sony to helm a third installment in the franchise but was reticent to take on such a daunting task. When he mulled over the idea, he decided that a reboot with an all female cast would alleviate a lot of his concerns about revisiting the world outlined in the first two films.
In the redux, four ghost hunters take on a gaggle of ghosts in New York City as restless spirits begin to return to the world of the living.
